RORY GILLEN

25 February - 06 March 2022 @ CCAS MANUKA

“This is the ideal make [sic] Physique, you may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like” was originally tweeted on the 13th of January 2016 by right wing troll Steven Crowder in reference to a picture of a Russian MMA fighter. The tweet was immediately and widely mocked, however this hypermasculine and pseudo-homoerotic sentiment glorifying traditional and often toxic ideals of masculinity was ironically adopted by the emerging Gen Z and already jaded millennials. Those most crushed by the heel of a system designed before their time and taking their future.

In late 2021, locked down and perpetually online, I found the unending swell of information, misinformation and hot takes utterly paralysing any sort of creativity. Drinking too much, plugging a vape in to recharge, and then getting served a fucking PragerU ad doesnt hit like it used to. This exhibition, whether you like it or not, is what peak performance looks like.

With all the insanity and changes we’ve endured over the last few years you'd be forgiven to think the system is failing. However the lack of any sort of substantial societal change, alongside the amplification of more toxic elements of our culture, suggests the system is instead thriving in the most lean and ruthless way possible. We can hope that after seeing the catastrophic consequences of capitalism during its “peak performance” that we may be encouraged to seek another, better system.

At the same time the structures of late stage capitalism and the dying throes of web 2.0 entrench themselves further into the status quo of neoliberalism and individualism. Flaws of unfettered capitalism have been laid bare: as demonstrated by the global supply chain woes amplified by ‘just in time manufacturing’. These economic systems only survived due to an unsustainable peak performance. What are the limits to this? Will anything destroy it? How long can you perform at your peak?

The work Pipeline, a multi-channel video installation contained in the exhibition, is a deep learning amalgamation of right wing figures and old power. Pipeline points to the figureheads and influencers that are fundamentally indifferent to the immense levels of inequality yet claim we are living in an age of unprecedented prosperity and opportunity for all. Overwhelmingly white and done up, these ideologues claim to speak uncomfortable truths. However, their claims are no more true than the misunderstanding of machine learning objectivism when placed in front of a human diaspora.

Machine learning systems were overwhelmingly built by and to serve people who look like me, it's important to critique their fundamental lack of interdependence. The age of the individual is over, may we come to the age of the community. Ultimately, You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like aims to explore the lived online existence at a time of many peaks, just perhaps not yours.

Artist Bio:

Rory Gillen (B. Kaurna Country, SA,1995) is an emerging Australian contemporary artist and researcher specialising in the politics of the networked image. His installations serve as complex systems, interconnecting old and new technologies to play upon assumptions of human agency in the mediation of visual information. Often using hacked technologies and processes, his work explores and elucidates contemporary concerns surrounding post-digital agency, compression, bias and how these systems impact structures of gender, ethnicity and class. His practice aims to focus on the ‘cyber-physical membrane’ and the discourses that flow through it.

Image: Rory Gillen Make [sic] (still 1), 2022, Video installation (5 mins), Dimensions variable